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Renardus is a collaborative project of the EU’s User‐friendly Information Society programme with partners from national libraries, university research and technology centres and subject gateways Europe‐wide. Its aim is to build a single service allowing users to search and browse existing Internet‐accessible scientific and cultural resource collections distributed across Europe. Renardus builds on the successes of subject gateway initiatives in Europe and elsewhere, and is evolving a collaborative model for addressing the increasingly difficult issues of sustainability and scalability facing individual gateway services. Describes the project’s context, progress to date and outstanding issues. Also outlines the opportunities and benefits for future collaboration with other organisations in developing the fully operational service.

Five years ago the problems being addressed by major educational resources were how to locate and structure a burgeoning universe of Web sites in order to serve their subject and professional communities with useful and relevant content. Today, new challenges, demands and opportunities are emerging: the linking of content with community, static information with dynamic news. Describes the evolution of three educational resources in the social sciences (SOSIG, Biz/Ed and Regard) and their use of personal profiling, distributed contributions and RSS news channels to serve and gather information. Examines the issues that arise from changing user bases and technologies, sustainability and the need for collaboration, data protection and privacy concerns. Analyses the tensions these and other services face as they move toward a model that links the static with the dynamic, content with community.

Renardus was developed under the EU’s User‐friendly Information Society programme by partners from national libraries, university research and technology centres and subject information gateways Europe‐wide. Since January 2000, those partners have been working towards realisation of their aim to build a single Web‐based “broker service” providing cross‐search/cross‐browse access to existing Internet‐accessible scientific and cultural resource collections distributed across Europe. This paper describes Renardus’ key concepts and highlights some of the collaborative frameworks and tools developed and deployed during the project, and the existing technical and information standards used, particularly in support of metadata modelling, mapping and sharing and the information architecture. Issues, implications and benefits for end users and information professionals are presented through illustrations of the interface design. We conclude with an outline of organisational arrangements and strategies, outstanding issues and next steps in encouraging future collaboration with other services.

This paper considers two of the key challenges facing a mature UK subject gateway (SOSIG): the sustainability of a labour‐intensive service and innovation and evaluation needed to keep pace with user needs. SOSIG's history and changing contexts are sketched and issues of changing Internet search technologies, trends in user behaviour, and changes in higher education teaching or learning are analysed. Reflects on the “Google challenge” and the need to take a more strategic approach to engaging with the user community, given emerging audiences and technologies. Concludes with how SOSIG will be shaped for the future through collaboration, service design and user engagement.